According to Seba and Madame Merian, the negroes eat the flesh of the Surinam toad (Pipa Surinamensis).
Frogs or toads of an enormous size (Crapaux) are very numerous in Dominica, and much esteemed as an article of food; the flesh, when fricasseed, being preferred by the English, as well as French, to chickens; and, when made into soup, recommended for the sick, especially in consumptive cases.
Wallace, in his Travels on the Amazon, tells us, ‘his Indians went several times early in the morning to the gapo to catch frogs, which they obtained in great numbers, stringing them on a sipo, and boiling them entire, entrails and all, and devoured them with much gusto. The frogs are mottled of various colours, have dilated toes, and are called jui.’
The eating of frogs seems to be indulged in in the Philippines, for a traveller tells us that—
‘After the rains there may generally be procured, by those who like them, frogs, which are taken from the ditch round the walls in great numbers, and are then fat and in good condition for eating, making a very favourite curry of some of the Europeans, their flesh being very tender.’[19]
FISH.
More than two-thirds of our globe being covered by the waters of the ocean, and of the remaining third a great part being washed by extensive rivers, or occupied by lakes, ponds, or marshes, these watery realms, teeming with life, furnish man with a great variety of food. Some of these have already passed under consideration in the reptilia, and others in the great class mammalia, as seals, morses, and manatees, which can remain at no great distance from the sea, together with whales, which never leave it, though constantly obliged, by the nature of their respiration, to seek its surface.
Mollusca, crustacea, annelides, and zoophytes are almost peculiar to this element, having but few scattered representatives on earth; but, amidst all its varied inhabitants, there are none more exclusively confined to its realms, none that rule them with such absolute sway, none more remarkable for number, variety of form, beauty of colour, and, above all, for the infinite advantages which they yield to man, than the great class of fishes. In fact, their evident superiority has caused their name to pass as a general appellation to all the inhabitants of the deep. Whales are called fish, crabs are called shell-fish, and the same term is used to denote oysters; though the first are mammalia, the second articulata, and the third mollusca.
Milton has well described the abundance of fish—
——‘Each creek and bay,